


our bodies will return

by owlvsdove



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Gen, Missing Scene, Panic Attacks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-01
Updated: 2015-03-01
Packaged: 2018-03-15 17:27:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 918
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3455639
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/owlvsdove/pseuds/owlvsdove
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jemma and Fitz are still on the surface, waiting for Trip to come back.</p>
            </blockquote>





	our bodies will return

**Author's Note:**

> Takes place immediately after 2.10.

 

After the rumbling stops, after the deep unsettling quakes finally cease, nothing happens for a long time.

Jemma looks at Fitz, and Fitz looks back at her, but they don’t hear Trip at the bottom of the line. No one’s on the radio.

Something’s wrong. Jemma can feel it. Something’s gone wrong.

Fitz’s hands are stuttering near her, struggling with a back and forth she doesn’t currently have an attention span for. He was holding her. _Was_. Somehow they separated, seamless and thoughtless, and she can feel him grasping and not. Yes and no. On and off. Black and white. Earth and air.

She digs in their kit for the radio. “May?” she searches quietly. Then a long moment. “Can anyone hear us?”

If she just tipped HYDRA off to their hideaway, she’s prepared. She’s a lot handier with a gun than she used to be and something just clicked into her face, silence slamming her reset button to survival. Protection. Something is really wrong. Something is _wrong_.

“Simmons?” crackles over the line. May’s voice, finally. Fitz looks up and they both crowd around the little receiver.

“What’s happening?”

“Skye went down into the city and Coulson followed. I haven’t heard from them since.”

They already knew that. “Trip went in to disable the bombs.”

“He’s not back yet?”

“No,” Jemma says.

“I need to go in after them,” May starts. “I can bring them—”

“No!” Jemma shouts. It comes out of her like a knife, sharp and quick and drawing blood. She has no idea where it came from. But come it does. “No, May, _please_ don’t go in.”

There is a long silence, and Jemma can only imagine her reaction.

“We have to do something, Simmons,” May says finally.

“Please don’t leave us, May. Where are you? We’ll come to you first!”

“Simmons—”

“It’s too dangerous for you to just—”

“Something’s happening.”

“What?”

“I can hear something. Standby.”

There is silence, so Fitz prepares himself to speak. “Jem. You need to calm down.”

She can see on his face that he’s just as disturbed by the day’s, week’s, month’s, year’s events. He feels it, too. But he’s trying to keep a level head because hers has clearly escaped down into the city with the rest of the team.

He speaks, so a tear escapes. He looks even more alarmed. She shudders: “I think something’s really wrong.”

She has no empirical evidence. Just an earthquake and a deep sense of dread, wicking and hot.

He clicks into place, and suddenly his hand is on her shoulder. He opens his mouth.

But the radio beeps, and May is there again. And something else.

“Get to the Bus.”

She is grave and sharp and quick, no-nonsense. But there was noise in the background. Noise she was trying to cover up.

“May, what’s happening?”

“Get to the Bus _now,_ ” she repeats, but Jemma recognizes it.

“Is that Skye?”

“Simmons, that’s an order.”

Jemma holds back a sob with the back of her hand. Something is wrong. Something is wrong. Fitz’s hand wraps around hers and presses the button for her, speaks for her:

“Why is Skye crying?”

But he sounds slightly more pulled together than Jemma, so May addresses him directly. “Fitz, get Simmons out and to the Bus as fast as you can. Leave the equipment. Just get to the Bus.”

“We’re on our way,” he says.

He pulls her, half-wrapped around her, shepherding her like a dog and a sheep. They burst into cool dusk air with the rhythm of his urgency and her mindless shuffling, and he manages to get her about halfway along the path before she stops completely, disintegrating.

“Jemma,” he implores.

That should be enough, but she’s losing herself. She is clinging to the edges of her being with her fingernails but she is declawed. No grip. No chance. She swirls down the drain helplessly. No breath. No grip. No chance. If Skye is crying, that’s reason enough to cry. But Jemma can’t help but feel like something horrifying just happened. So she sinks. Suddenly she has her back pressed against the stone wall of the path and she can’t remember sitting down. Fitz’s hand goes to her shoulder again but she jerks wildly away.

“Don’t. Please.”

He puts his hands up, backs away to lean against the other side of the path. She dimly registers him trying not to feel offended.

The earth is still but she can feel it moving. She can.

“We have to go, Jemma.”

She’s shaking her head but she doesn’t know why. She can’t move. She’s stuck like stone.

Fitz crouches down, close but far. On her level but a million miles away. “Breathe,” he says.

She shakes her head. She’s a stubborn one. “I need,” she gasps. Chokes. “I need May.”

“May’s not here. We have to go to her.”

Any other moment of her life she would chew him out for talking down. But her sense – all her senses have left her.

She needs a wide berth and the gentle hands of a ghost. This is too much to ask for.

She needs to pull herself up off the ground.

“We have to go to Skye,” Fitz says.

She closes her eyes for a long, long time, trying to deny. But nothing lasts forever. She struggles herself off the shaking earth, airless and alone.

Her family is waiting with a new tragedy. She has no choice but to hear it.

(She should’ve run far, far away.)

 


End file.
